It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
― William Faulkner
The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.
― Milan Kundera
The characters who go to make up my stories and novels are not portraits. Characters I invent along with the story that carries them. Attached to them are what I’ve borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, bit by bit, of persons I have seen or noticed or remembered in the flesh – a cast of countenance here, a manner of walking there, that jumps to the visualising mind when a story is under way. I don’t write by invasion into the life of a real person: my own sense of privacy is too strong for that; and I also know instinctively that living people to whom you are close – those known to you in ways too deep, too overflowing, ever to be plumbed outside love – do not yield to, could never fit into, the demands of a story. Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write most entirely out of yourself, that a character becomes in its own right another human being on the page. ― Eudora Welty, On Writing
I have a confession to make. I did not attend every one of the masterclasses. But I did attend the one about creating character, presented by Shyam Selvadurai
First we were told that the sense of character can come across effectively using simile and metaphor. This was followed by an exercise in which we were asked to pick 4 or 5 people from our lives and describing how we feel about them using simile and metaphor.
My father was stern, as only a former drill sergeant cold be.
My mother gave new meaning to the phrase “work-a-holic.”
My aunt was like a butterfly with a mother complex, always flitting from one thing to another to make sure everyone was taken care of.
My granddaughter is an unceasing ray of sunshine.
My sister is like an ostrich, always sticking her head in the sand so she can’t see what’s going on, and when she does raise her head she has her rose-coloured glasses firmly in place.
A well-developed character has flaws and limitations. They need to grow and evolve and have a basis in human nature, even if they’re not human. They should be unique – slightly different from the world around them. Thought should be put into them and their flaws and foibles.
On the other hand, a flat character has only one distinctive trait and is incapable of varying from that characteristic. Flat characters can be just as important to your story as a well rounded one. They’re predictable, so there are no surprises with them. The town gossip can never be trusted with a secret. The old man across the street can be depended on to keep track whatever is going on the neighborhood.
There are many ways of showing character. Authorial Interpretation is where the author tells us the character’s background, motives, values, virtues, etc. It allows you to move in time and space; lets you have control over what the reader knows.
The Direct Method uses the five senses to shape character. We humans receive our primary impressions through sight, but the other senses are important too – the limp handshake, soft check, scent (perfume or cologne, garlic or onions on the breath). Sound associations could come from the character’s name – Debby Downer, Mary Sunshine.
The contradiction between appearance and reality can be a source of conflict and tension to define character. Think of Alice in Wonderland. A character’s physical features, their shape, sense of style, clothing, or relationship to people or objects can help define them.
A significant character must be capable of causing Action and being changed by it. What does the protagonist want to have happen at the end? What Thought process must he go through? Work back from that.
There is a gap between suppressed thought and expressed thought. A person can’t control their wants and desires, but they can control what they do about their behavior. Achievement of that which we desire would be easy if the internal thought process was not so faulty. Idealism is often a good character trait.
Dialogue adds to a reader’s knowledge of a situation. It moves the story forward and reveals something about the speaker’s personality. It can dramatize the relationship between characters.
In the Indirect Method, character may be presented through the opinions of other characters through speech, thoughts, and actions. The character giving the opinion is also characterized. When we are not privy to a character’s thoughts, the internal conflict must be expressed in a contradiction between appearance, speech, and action.
Exercise: We were shown a photo of a garbage truck that appeared to be stuck, with two youths, one wearing a mask, standing beside it and several police officers confronting them, and then told to write a scene showing character using appearance, action, thought, and speech. Show, don’t tell. Use significant details.
It was just supposed to be for fun, you know? A lark, a prank. But no, good ‘ole Mickey had to go all out, like he usually does, and next thing you know, the garbage truck got stuck. What a mess! And the smell! Whoo-wee the smell was bad. We’re talking dead bodies in a sewer bad. Not that there were actually dead bodies in the truck. Lordy, how much worse would it have been for us if there had been? Then old man Krantz called the cops on us. The cops! Man, I can’t believe that. Like I said, it was just supposed to be a joke. Mickey, he looks like a choir boy, even in his mask. That’s why I let him talk to the cops. We didn’t mean no harm. But man, it was fun while it lasted. My mom’s going to kill me!
The final piece of advice we were given was to consider what we want the reader to think about our character, and have their actions suit that character.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
WORDAGE REPORT
So . . . in order to make any progress with my writing, I need to start working at my desk in my office. The only problem with that is that the kittens like to be wherever the people (meaning me) are, whether they’re sleeping or playing. And it’s not that I mind them playing or sleeping in my office, it’s just that they want to check out the view from the window – the window with the ledge I have my plants lined up on. So either I write at the dining room table, which gets uncomfortable after a while, or I relocate some of my plants.
Just recently, however, the kittens have given me a third option. I use a lap desk when I’m in the living room. A couple of days ago I was sitting cross-legged in my recliner with the lap desk across my lap, and Dinsdale discovered the space between the desk and the chair made a perfect, kitten-sized cave. And if I recline my chair, I can raise my knees slightly and they both fit in there. At least until they start wrestling and I boot them off.
This was another one of those weeks where I started out strong and then it went downhill fast. It didn’t help that the weather was cold and miserable – lots of wind and rain. The unrelenting grey gave me a headache several days in a row, and I was fighting off the flu bug that’s going around.
NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,957+675+341+739=3,712
DOWN 85 words from last week
Total = 3,712
Goals For Next Week:
Do some words outside of blog posts
EDITING:
0 pages
Remember how I took my laptop to Staples in the summer? And before I did that, I put all my writing files on a flash drive? Well, when I went looking for the thumb drive that had all my most current writing files, I couldn’t find it.
I checked every flash drive I own, including the ones that aren’t supposed to have anything on them, and I could not find the stories from last year’s NaNo, nor could I find the only copy I had of Elemental Spirit. They were missing. Vanished. Gone. Thirty stories and one novel. Poof!
I felt sick. All that work . . . Since I often use the arm of the couch as a shelf when I’m in the living room, I checked in the couches – found a crochet hook, a really nice mechanical pencil, and a bookmark, but no flash drive.
Finally, I emptied the messenger bag I use for my writing stuff entirely and found one last flash drive hidden in a fold. I checked it, and sure enough, there were my files. I now have them on the flash drive, my desk top, and I even backed them up to Dropbox (which does not look the way I remember it). Whew! Crisis averted.
Goal For Next Week:
Finish editing the story I was sent and get it back to the author.
MARKETING:
Honestly, why do I even have this as a sub-heading? I guess hope springs eternal. Maybe I’ll get something submitted sometime, but it sure wasn’t last week.
Goal for Next Week:
Submit something. Anything!
TECH & TRAINING:
I did go so far as to open Dropbox to check for the NaNo stories and it looks a lot different from the last time I saw it. And while it had some backups, my stories were not among them. Then I opened it again when I found my story so I could back it up.
Prior to that I was thinking that it was finally time to break out the ReMarkable and figure out how to use it. I could use it to edit flash stories in the evenings – it would be easier to manage than the laptop with the kittens around.
Goal For Next Week:
Check out the features of Dropbox. Figure out my ReMarkable.
POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I actually got the research done for a couple of different forms, and picked one at random to use for my form of the week. And yes, it was easier, with only a syllable count to worry about.
With NaNo fast approaching I’d like to get a couple of posts done ahead of time. Even if I can get the research done and distilled into the posts it would help. Then all I’d have to worry about are the examples.
Once again, I did not even give the anthology a passing thought. And I’m thinking I’ll have to put it on hold until after NaNo. There just isn’t going to be time.
Goal For Next Week:
Share a new poetry form.
CRAFTING:
Crafting? I knew I was forgetting something. Actually, I did think about it, but the truth of the matter is I was afraid to do my needlework with the kittens around. I’m sure they would love to “help” with the colourful threads. And I’m not even going to think about doing and crocheting or (God forbid) knitting when they’re so active.
But Christmas is coming, and if I’m careful I should be able to do some crafts at the dining room table. Maybe.
Goal For Next Week:
Crochet bookworms. Figure out dragon pillow for granddaughter.
WHAT I’M READING:
Finished reading The Guest List, by Fern Michaels, and then went on to read It Happened One Summer and Hook, Line, and Sinker by Tessa Bailey. Now I’m between books again. I’ve got lots of them, I just need to pick one. Or maybe even figure out how to organize my Kindle books in their “cloud” so I can start using it again.
Did not start my Goodreads list, but I did find some scraps of paper I’d jotted down books I’ve read on.
Goal For Next Week:
Spend a little time each day reading. At least start my list of books so I can update my Goodreads account!
GOAL REVIEW:
Despite my week kind of falling apart at the end, it wasn’t too bad. My blog posts were all up on time, and most of them were done early. I did not, however, get any extra posts done. The kittens are not as glued to me as they were in the beginning, and they’ve been testing out other places to sleep. Plus, I’m getting better at relocating them if they’re in the way.
I almost gave myself a heart attack when I couldn’t find the flash drive my NaNo stories were saved to. Thirty stories is a lot of stories, and I have no idea what prompts I used so there was no chance of re-creating them. But my editing is getting a boost this week from a story I received in my email, so I should have a better week in that regard.
The marketing and tech & training . . . *sigh* I keep thinking about removing them altogether, but there’s always the chance I’ll have something to show for them. As for the crafts? The closest I came to a craft was repairing a stuffed octopus for the granddaughter.
But still when all is said and done, I can’t say it was a bad week. It wasn’t a great one either, but at least it wasn’t a bad one.
Let’s see if I can make this week a better one.
Happy writing.
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